‘You orright, mate?’ Jessica carries a bottle of kero for the hatcher lamp and, with the cracked corn in one hand and the bucket of mash in the other, she walks towards the door.
‘Leg hurts,’ Billy groans, limping behind her. Well, that’s one good thing, Jessica thinks, he won’t be trying to escape by running for it.
When they return to the kitchen it’s obvious to Jessica that Billy’s leg is troubling him badly. He is sweating buckets and sits down as they come in. He grabs his leg in both hands, holding it behind the knee so his foot doesn’t touch the floor.
‘Here, let’s have another squiz at your leg,’ she says.
‘Take off yer boot, mate.’
Billy is reluctant to reach down to his boot, not sure how to go about it without hurting himself more. ‘Wait on,’ Jessica says and kneels down on the floor and gently works the broken boot off his foot. Then she pulls up the leg of Joe’s moleskins again and sees that the blood has seeped through the bandage and some has run down over Billy’s ankles. His heel is sticky with blood and the inside of his boot is full of it.
She cleans up his foot and the boot, then removes the blood-soaked bandage and examines the tear in his calf, which appears to have opened even further. ‘It needs to be stitched,’ she says, more to herself than to Billy.
‘Billy, I’m gunna have to stitch it, or it’ll bleed or worse, get infected and make you real crook.’ Jessica knows that she’s losing time now but she’s got no alternative. She has to try to stem the blood by closing the wound. She makes a thick swab of rag and shows Billy how to hold it against his calf.
‘I’ll be back soon, Billy, just going out the back to get the stuff I need to fix you.’
Billy nods and Jessica goes back to the sleep-out and Joe’s medicine box. She opens one of the little drawers in it and takes out the gramophone needle box in which Joe keeps his suturing needles. Then she removes a packet of horsehair from the drawer next to it. She’s stitched the dogs several times when they’ve been caught on a fence and many a calf, and once a bad cut to Joe’s arm he got stringing barbed wire. She knows she’s not too strong at suturing a wound, Joe’s a lot better at it, but Billy’s leg is not going to close without a dozen or more stitches.
Jessica finds a scrap of paper and a pencil stub on Joe’s apple box and hurriedly writes him a note:
Dear Father,
Billy Simple’s gone crazy and murdered Mrs Thomas and the girls. I’ve taken him to the magistrate at Narrandera, left Sunday morning.
Don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right.
Jessica.
P.S. I’ve taken the Winchester.
She places the note inside Joe’s medicine box and returns to the kitchen, where she takes the kettle off the hob and sterilises the needle and then swabs the dog bite, wiping away all the blood and sulphur ointment and making sure to clean the wound deep into the muscle fibre. Billy grips both hands tightly above his knee, his eyes closed, tears running silently down his cheeks.
‘Sorry, mate, it’s gunna get worse before I’m finished with you. You can yell out if you like, there’s nobody here but us.’ Jessica sutures the wound the way Joe’s shown her. By now Billy’s swallowing his bottom lip and Jessica, glancing up at him, thinks it’s a damn good thing Billy hasn’t got any teeth or he’d slice it right off. He’s sweating heavily and still gripping his leg with both hands, but he doesn’t once cry out.
Jessica knots and then cuts the end of the horsehair. Her work is by no means a thing of beauty and Joe would probably scold her for a messy job, but she figures it will probably hold unless Billy has to run for it. She swabs the stitched wound with iodine and wraps a bandage tightly about it, then sterilises the needle again and puts it back into the little gramophone needle box. Jessica leaves what remains of the horsehair and the little tin box on the kitchen table. She knows Joe will see the gear on his return and will take it to his medicine box. Joe has a tidy mind and has drilled her since she was a brat about putting things back where they’ve come from. Jessica knows he’ll find her note.
‘There you go, put your boot back on, Billy. You’ll have to stay here in the kitchen while I harness the sulky, no use opening that up again trying to walk down to the paddock.’ Jessica is anxious now — time is running out.
Billy looks frightened. ‘D-d-d ... don’t leave me, Jessie.’
‘I’m not going nowhere without ya, love.’ Jessica smiles at him, then folds her arms in front of her and pretends to rest her forehead on them. ‘Good chance to get some shut-eye, what say, eh, Billy?’ She points to the table.
Billy obediently folds his arms and places them on the table and rests his head between them, closing his eyes. ‘Good boy. Won’t be long. You stay there and be good, Billy.’
On her way to the paddock Jessica passes the windlass and sees a crow pecking at Billy’s bloody clothes, which are draped over the wall of the well. She shouts and the crow flies off in a clatter of urgent wings, cawing its protest. Bloody vermIn, doesn’t take them long, Jessica thinks.
The water remains in the tub and Jessica can see what’s left of the soap lying on the bottom. Pushing her shirt sleeve up well past her elbows, she reaches down into the scummy water for the soap and places it to dry on the wall of the well, then she retrieves the scrubbing brush floating on the surface and puts it beside the soap. Her arm’s now covered in a film of pink scum and several of Red’s hairs stick to her. She’ll have to leave poor Red to the crows and the meat ants, she sighs. And tonight there’ll be a fox or two to have a good feed off him and the other dogs. It’ll be a couple of days before she can bury their bones and what bits of skin and fur remain.
Jessica fills up a bucket of water from the tank and, scooping her left hand into the bucket, she splashes her arm clean and unrolls and buttons her sleeve at the wrist again. She casts about for a stick. Finding a stout twig, she uses it to lift Billy’s shirt, now almost dried and beginning to stiffen in the hot morning sun. She drops it gingerly into the tin tub where it floats on the surface of the water. Jessica pushes it down under the water, forcing the air pockets from it with the stick. Then in go Billy’s torn moleskins. After this she departs to get the horse, a pony named Napoleon, who’ll go all day at five miles an hour if you give him a bit of a spell every now and then and let him poke his nose into a bag of oats. Back in the kitchen she finds Billy Simple asleep, his head still cupped in his arms. She loads the basket into the back of the sulky and returns to fetch a couple of blankets, which she rolls and ties with a piece of twine.
It’s not yet cold enough to damp down the heat of the day but in the early mornings there’s just the beginning of a chill in the air. Finally she carries a billy and a canvas water bag she’s filled out to the sulky and hangs both on a hook behind the front seat. It’s time to go.
She shakes Billy awake. ‘Wake up, Billy, got to kick the dust, mate.’
Billy is drugged for want of sleep and he whimpers, protesting, ‘No, no, Billy sleep now!’
‘Billy, wake up! We’ve got to get moving, the mob coming after you will be here soon enough.’